Some of these places are as big as the stories they come from. Some of them are as alive in the reader's
imagination as Lancelot, Dorothy, The White Queen, Frodo, Dumbledore or Lady
Mary.

If settings can be a major character in a story, how do we go about
creating those particular kinds of characters?

Not every setting has to be memorable or so alive you can picture other
stories taking place in them, but we all want the major settings in our tales
to be as engaging as they can be. There
are many ways to make settings come alive, but every setting usually begins
with an inspiration.

The Familiar, and the Favorites:

Dickens used his home city of Rochester, England to set his last novel
in, giving it a different name:
Cloisterham. Why rename it? Although the setting is very much based on
his detailed familiarity with Rochester, it's his take on the place, the
feelings it evoked for him personally—in conjunction with the gothic tone of The
Mystery of Edwin Drood—that conspired to produce a setting so alive and
atmospheric, it breathes all the more with every description of it being an
ancient place of the buried dead.

Every year in fall I attend an event at the McMenamin's Edgefield in
Troutdale, OR. I love the
Edgefield. I couldn't believe it when
one day near twilight I passed by this cluster of trees with bright yellow fall
foliage to find the canopies of leaves sparkling with twinkle lights. There were no building, no power lines. With no sign of cords or outlets, it was
like having a magical moment of encountering faerie. That year when I did NaNoWriMo, I couldn't help it: the story being a modern day adaptation of Through
the Looking Glass, adult Alice's urbanized Wonderland was inspired by the
Edgefield. People who’ve read the novel
for critique are struck by the setting, and I know it's because the enthusiasm
and delight I have for the Edgefield translates to the reader. (The novel is Sleepwaking, and it will be my
third book, coming out this fall.)

A few years ago I went to St. Louis and found this crazy, cool looking
place called the City Museum on the web.
I spent a day there, a day I'll never forget. I consider it one of my other favorite places in the world, along
with the Edgefield, the Georgia Aquarium, any Cirque du Soleil tent, Florence,
and the end of the street I used to live on in Höheinöd, Germany. The City Museum is an eclectic mix of found
industrial objects housed in a giant old shoe warehouse in which you can find
the unexpected at every turn. Caves,
climbable giant slinkies, an airplane fuselage suspended several stories in the
air via wire mesh tunnels like hamster runs you have to crawl through to get up
there, an aquarium, multi-story slides, a wall made out of glass bottles, and
so much more. A couple years later I
wrote a story using it as the inspiration for the setting, calling my place
‘the Imaginarium.’ Beta readers have
loved the Imaginarium, much the same way I love the City Museum. You can find the Imaginarium in my second
book, Defense Mechanisms, which has just been released.

What are some of your favorite places?
Places you love going to. That
you love being in. Place where you've
had memorable experiences. Places you
know so well you almost don't think of them anymore.

These could be the next great settings for your stories. Figure out why they’ve impacted you and what
emotions they generate, and then write to give your readers that kind of
experience. Whether you use them as is,
or let them inspire you to create something all your own—if they touch you or
animate you, they can do the same for your readers.

___

Mini-bio:

____________ _ _ _ _

Amber Michelle Cook writes stories of deep, meaningful fun.

Partly raised in Germany, she went to an international school for
high-school, majored in linguistics, loves literature and period pieces. She's also a photography/graphic arts artist
of color and wonder living in the great Northwest.

In addition to leading improv writing tables, she's one of the team
behind National Novel Editing Month and Member Relations Chair of
Communications/Marketing for the Northwest Independent Writers Association.

Aside from words and stories, she adores dogs and is fascinated by any
and everything aquatic. Especially
cephalopods.

____________ _ _ _ _

Book blurb:

_______ _ _ _
_

What if your déjà vu was really flashes of a life running parallel to
your own?

_ _ _ ____

An imaginative child, Janey left childhood far behind as soon as older
children and adults began to tease her for it, much to the disappointment of
her younger brother. On her thirtieth
birthday, the first Pulse hits and drives them to seek shelter at his favorite
hangout – a one-of-a-kind indoor playland for grown-ups called the Imaginarium. When the place is attacked by urban looters,
she becomes an unwilling 'defender of imagination.'

Raised within the confines of Tanglewood, a workshop-residence formed
from the awakening of a grove of silver birch, Ozanne fled her family's
unrelenting expectations for a life of frivolity and vanity at Court. Upon the passing of a Wave that obstructs
all but personal Glamour, she races back with her brother to protect it from
the Foe, though certain she has little to offer. Why then does he persist in looking to her to protect them?

_ _ _ ____

Defense Mechanisms is
a contemporary fairy tale of finding realistic, modern-day happy endings when
the ways we learn to protect ourselves from other people's emotional sore
spots, like ignorance and hate, keep us from being who we really are and finding
our place in life.